Anna, 81 months and counting

“How much time does it take the Earth to go all the way around the sun? I better look that up in my planets book after dinner."

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“Mom, come look at this cloud! I think it’s a funnel cloud, it has ominous striations all over it!”

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“I can’t find a book! I’m supposed to bring my favorite book and I can’t find one!”

“Anna, you have a dozen books all over, just pick one.”

“But I can’t find ONE, Mommy! I’m only supposed to bring ONE!”

In lieu of any other description, that is Anna in her own words. She checks out encyclopedias from the library, just for fun. She has a lightening quick memory and picks up little facts everywhere, dropping them casually throughout her conversation, as innocently as a toddler reciting the alphabet. She would sit, oblivious to the world, all day if we didn't tell her to just, "put down the book and step away", words I never thought I would utter.

Of course she’s still a little kid and just as gullible as your average 1^st grader. “Harushi in my class says her parents are out of town and she gets to drive herself everywhere and go to McDonald’s all by herself and see movies at the theatre (pronounced thee-A-ter) every night! True, she does! REALLY!”

Since she was born, Anna has been more sensitive than the other kids. She has a thinner skin. She feels insults more deeply, empathizes with others to the point of her OWN tears and can (more rarely now as she gets older) have violent fits of temper over strange things that leave her hysterically inconsolable for hours. When this happens, Kurt and I just give each other the look and, depending on the circumstance, either let her settle herself alone in her room or just hold her until the storm passes. We've learned it's basically unkind to try to punish her or tell her to "just stop it and calm down". She is an emotional sponge and sometimes things, often just little things, start to wring her out. She gets that from me, actually.

In the same vein, her love is extreme. She hugs, she kisses, she holds on tightly for longer than is almost comfortable. At any given opportunity she will snuggle in against us as comfortable as a kitten. Throw in a story and she’s in heaven on high. Her gap-tooth smile (she's lost 4 teeth and plays constantly with the loose ones, to my disgust. Ew.) is just about my favorite thing ever.

If you ask her, Anna will tell you she wants to be a scientist or an artist when she grows up. I keep telling her she can be both. For the moment, she remains undecided.

Most of all, Anna is a big sister, a caretaker. She teaches Silvia what she has learned, though sometimes the lessons come with a certain air of condescension and impatience. I find them sometimes curled up together as she reads her sister a story. The love to play “Tea Cafe” with made-up menus where they set up the house as a restaurant and, together, make fabulous dinners for us (I wonder if it’s bad that they always put beer on the beverage menu?). She loves all things Jack, wanting to hold him and carrying him around when I’m not looking. If he’s in his crib or high chair while I try to get something else done, she will happily entertain him with dancing, singing, random screeching and anything else that wins a smile. 

At a play area yesterday I saw a little baby girl, not yet two, wearing a dress exactly like one Anna had at the same age. So tiny. It made me smile, a little sadly, but mostly just with pleasure. I still remember the clothes she wore back as a baby, yes, but that is just the cover of the book. What she’s come to be inside those pages is so much more a wonder to me. She is beautiful, precocious, tempestuous, caring and bright as a star. 

And, for now, those are my kids at six, four and one… and counting.